listen to yourselves....do you really think ryanair care about the opinions of people? All they care about is getting pax onboard their aircraft and selling them all the add ons such as bags, PB, excess, onboard catering etc. even making money off the onboard marketing from other companies. So they might not go about it in the best way, but they have one of the highest load factors (and lets remember they use 189 seaters, not 150 or less like your average lcc) and they offer the cheapest fares, fact.
If you dont like ryanair fair play, but they have made travel accessible to everyone, and they should be credited for that. People just dont like to see success, thats a shame.
Now wait a minute! Many of us do appreciate Ryanair's way of making business, we have also learned to value the price-level, many estimate the other carriers' fares in relation to FR rock-bottom standard, why not like their success in general. The real problem is, in my opinion, just what you've said: "
do you really think ryanair care about the opinions of people?". And that's the core of this issue. It might become more and more chalenging for them to get
pax onboard their aircraft if they still disregard these opinions. Never underestimate other people, they might vote against you (with their feet and money as well), the competition doesn't sleep. While they do not usually sell 1penny flights, they may at least pretend to care about you. And nobody likes to be cheated. When they promise you to show the entire price of the flight and you notice that all changes were less-than-virtual, do you like it? You still have to search one-by-one to find the 1p flights without tax and distinguish them from 1p flights with tax, so where is this clarity and simplicity promised? O'Leary build this airline from scratch and made it very convincingly, all honour goes to him. At this stage however, he showed a lack of the fineness in the relation to customers. That really doesn't pay.
I've observed a slow, but clear fall in load factors on many routes, it should be a warning, but the explanation is always related to something else (as we hear), the passengers are very satisfied, as they say. Are we? Or perhaps, the route policy based on some research rather than only on joining the "deal-prone" airports with themselves would work better? For example, which is better: to link cold Finland with wet Liverpool (because there is a 'trusted' airport), to fly half-empty and to retreat very soon or perhaps would it be smarter to fly well-paying passengers from cold Scandinavia to sunny Southern Italy? Or what was the sense of initiating fligths from Germany to Billund amidst winter, when the Legoland was closed, just because BLL has offered some kind of a deal? Even combined with 1-cent offer it didn't fill the planes. Think a bit different, I say, and listen. Just listen to your passengers. If you think the "free" flights will be enough, you are wrong. People might prefer to pay a little bit more just to get something more. Here in Finland people speak English, but booking in foreign language scares away, it's too stressful for many. Was it really so costful to keep Finnish language version going? A minor issue, you can say. But the life (and our decision making) are usually based on minor matters, don't you think?
My advice to FR: don't overestimate yourselves and do not think your customers are not smart enough, do not daunt them.